Not ready to call for a Mastermines Unite! quite yet, but after voicing some of my fears to Matt last night, I decided the time has come for me to ask of you some help.

I am 95% finished the final beta draft of NGHB last night (sounds like I am a commitment phobe…final/beta/draft) I just need to proofread it which I will be done with on Sunday come heck or high water.

Anyway…I want to send the draft out but my biggest concern right now is that I’m not explaning things well. Does anyone have the time to go through a 55 page doc and just see if it makes sense? I don’t need a playtest (not complaining mind you…) I just want to make sure that the words I used make sense and as Matt put it if I am explaning how to get from X to Y to Z that I haven’t unintentionally left out steps A, B, and C because I do them automatically.

If anyone is cool with it, can you comment here. I know how to get ahold of everyone on the list.

Well I have been working to get the .5 draft of the game up and running. Basically, the draft I have been working on, and part of why I have been so silent is that I am trying to make this a beta playtest draft. I hope to have something soon.

At Joshua AC Newman‘s suggestion, I checked with Publishers’ Graphics on when they’d need to have my PDFs by to have my books to me by August 7. This is going to make my timetable to get the books by Gen Con much tighter. I really need to kick my own ass to get shit done on time now. Shame on me.

I’m grateful to Joshua for thinking to make me ask this question. If the books are at Gen Con, it’s his “fault.”

I spent an hour and a half breaking the game last Wednesday, using the Joshua Bishop-Roby’s method that Daniel Solis used for Do. I have a half-finished post sitting in my Inbox, but other things keep getting in the way. Hopefully, I’ll post something soon – at least something after I finish breaking the game.

I’ve been trying to schedule a playstorming session with some of the locals, but summer is turning out to be incredibly difficult for many of us. Work is crushing me, Andy is in a similar situation and has two projects with final edits due by the end of June, and others are on vacation or have tough schedules to coordinate. I’m going to keep trying, but I’m lowering my expectation to get significant playstorming or -testing done prior to GenCon.

That said, I’m now focusing on having a fully playable draft for GenCon, and I’m looking to collect commitments from any and all to participate in playtest sessions at GenCon. I have a separate post on my design blog (xposted to LiveJournal) soliticing commitments, so please sign up there, if you’re interested.

I wish I had more and better to report, but that’s where I am right now. I’m thrilled to hear about everyone else’s progress, though, and I understand that Mythender is being released at the end of this week. Maybe Ryan can explain the need for the name change to Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition? 🙂

Up to June 15: Me editing text furiously, playing around with InDesign.
June 15: Jenn delivers art sketches.
June 15: I start laying out the text with Jenn’s sketches.
June 15 – July 1: Jenn, Joshua, and I kibitz over the images.
June 25: First draft of layout to Joshua.
June 25 – July 1: We kibitz over layout.
July 1: Final art from Jenn.
July 1 – July 9: Fiddle with layout, replace sketches with final art.
July 9: Send PDF to Publisher’s Graphics.
Between July 14 and July 16: Proof arrives. I review it. I somehow confer with Joshua over it.
Between July 15 and July 17: I OK the proof, printing begins
Between August 4 and August 7: The books arrive.

I should probably push the “fiddle with layout” date back a bit but I want to be pessimistic. If any of these pieces can happen earlier, that will be helpful. In any case, it’s a week of wiggle room between when I expect to be done and Gen Con. Not extremely comfy, but good enough.

So I was running the first-ever multi-session game of Misspent Youth this weekend, and I realized that while I can make the Tag* work, I have to work at it, and others probably aren’t going to want to. So out it goes.

This was tough for me to do. I kept thinking that there was a magical way I could phrase things to make it work,but in the end I came to realize that it just wasn’t going to happen.

In other news, Mickey ran the second-ever never-played-the-game-with-me session of Misspent Youth (she also ran the first) at Go Play Northwest. It sounds like it went mixed, but ok. I’m waiting on actual play, which Mickey says that she can probably provide soon.

* For those who don’t follow my game slavishly, the Tag is this thing in the game where you get it when you treat other characters like friends (rely on them, come to their aid, compliment them, etc.). When that happened, you were very lightly in charge in-character, and The Authority would direct its attacks at you.

Daniel Levine, a guy too awesome for words, has posted this incredible hack of Misspent Youth to do a Vampire game. It’s super-cool and quite exciting. You play neonates out to break the hold of The Beast on your city.

Witness, and envy the awesomeness of having someone do this kind of thing to your game.

1. I’ve been avoiding this post because its a bit embarassing, but I need help.

I have a mechanic I think it interesting and very quick to use with the two stat system and I have a nice device idea for the countdown. I know how I want the book to look and what language to use. All of that is well and good.

But I’m stuck on how to go from character generation to actual play. I had this idea about the player(s) and GM writing down a series of scenes they’d like on index cards, and then sequencing them up into a session, but that still assumes that the GM and player(s) know what scenes they’d like.

How can I get this to work better?

2. I have secured a couple locals for an upcoming playtest and will be creating a playtest scenario this week. I’ll post it up for review once I’m done.

Meet the Miners

We are fledgling game designers, each working on a single new design in public (but really working on it in this group… but really working on it in public). The complete current drafts (or as complete as they stand) are in the Projects page. We also tell you what we’re about and how we do things around here on the Mission Statement page.

Master Mines Reservists
These are Master Mines members who have moved into the Publishing phase and are busy with that work or who are taking a break from designing or have bowed out for various reasons. However, these Reserve Miners remain close friends of the group. Reservists can be called in at any time to fight in case of an interstellar invasion by receiving the call: “Master Miners Mobilize!”